In 2012, the EU received the Nobel Peace Prize for having "contributed to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy, and human rights in Europe."[44][45] In 2013, Croatia became the 28th EU member.[46][47][48]

Including the overseas territories of France which are located outside the continent of Europe, but which are members of the union, the EU experiences most types of climate from Arctic (North-East Europe) to tropical (French Guiana), rendering meteorological averages for the EU as a whole meaningless. The majority of the population lives in areas with a temperate maritime climate (North-Western Europe and Central Europe), a Mediterranean climate (Southern Europe), or a warm summer continental or hemiboreal climate (Northern Balkans and Central Europe).[54]

The EU's population is highly urbanised, with some 75% of inhabitants (and growing, projected to be 90% in seven member states by 2020) living in urban areas. Cities are largely spread out across the EU, although with a large grouping in and around the Benelux. An increasing percentage of this is due to low density urban sprawl which is extending into natural areas. In some cases, this urban growth has been due to the influx of EU funds into a region.[55]

Member states

Through successive enlargements, the European Union has grown from the six founding states—Belgium, France, West Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands—to the current 28. Countries accede to the union by becoming party to the founding treaties, thereby subjecting themselves to the privileges and obligations of EU membership. This entails a partial delegation of sovereignty to the institutions in return for representation within those institutions, a practice often referred to as "pooling of sovereignty".[56][57]

To become a member, a country must meet the Copenhagen criteria, defined at the 1993 meeting of the European Council in Copenhagen. These require a stable democracy that respects human rights and the rule of law; a functioning market economy; and the acceptance of the obligations of membership, including EU law. Evaluation of a country's fulfilment of the criteria is the responsibility of the European Council.[58] No member state has yet left the Union, although Greenland (an autonomous province of Denmark) withdrew in 1985.[59] The Lisbon Treaty now contains a clause under Article 50, providing for a member to leave the EU.[60] On 23 June 2016, the United Kingdom voted by referendum to leave the EU. However, it remains a member until it officially exits, and has not yet begun formal withdrawal procedures.[49]

Environment

In 1957, when the EEC was founded, it had no environmental policy.[67] Over the past 50 years, an increasingly dense network of legislation has been created, extending to all areas of environmental protection, including air pollution, water quality, waste management, nature conservation, and the control of chemicals, industrial hazards and biotechnology.[68] According to the Institute for European Environmental Policy, environmental law comprises over 500 Directives, Regulations and Decisions, making environmental policy a core area of European politics.[69]

European policy-makers originally increased the EU's capacity to act on environmental issues by defining it as a trade problem.[70]Trade barriers and competitive distortions in the Common Market could emerge due to the different environmental standards in each member state.[71] In subsequent years, the environment became a formal policy area, with its own policy actors, principles and procedures. The legal basis for EU environmental policy was established with the introduction of the Single European Act in 1987.[69]

Initially, EU environmental policy focused on Europe. More recently, the EU has demonstrated leadership in global environmental governance, e.g. the role of the EU in securing the ratification and coming into force of the Kyoto Protocol despite opposition from the United States. This international dimension is reflected in the EU's Sixth Environmental Action Programme,[72] which recognises that its objectives can only be achieved if key international agreements are actively supported and properly implemented both at EU level and worldwide. The Lisbon Treaty further strengthened the leadership ambitions.[73] EU law has played a significant role in improving habitat and species protection in Europe, as well as contributing to improvements in air and water quality and waste management.[69]

Mitigating climate change is one of the top priorities of EU environmental policy. In 2007, member states agreed that, in future, 20% of the energy used across the EU must be renewable, and carbon dioxide emissions have to be lower in 2020 by at least 20% compared to 1990 levels.[74] The EU has adopted an emissions trading system to incorporate carbon emissions into the economy.[75] The European Green Capital is an annual award given to cities that focuses on the environment, energy efficiency and quality of life in urban areas to create smart city.

Politics

The European Union operates according to the principles of conferral (which says that it should act only within the limits of the competences conferred on it by the treaties) and of subsidiarity (which says that it should act only where an objective cannot be sufficiently achieved by the member states acting alone). Laws made by the EU institutions are passed in a variety of forms. Generally speaking, they can be classified into two groups: those which come into force without the necessity for national implementation measures (regulations) and those which specifically require national implementation measures (directives).[76]

Constitutional nature

The classification of the EU in terms of international or constitutional law has been much debated. It began life as an international organisation and gradually developed into a confederation of states. However, since the mid-1960s it has also added several of the key attributes of a federation, such as the direct effect of the law of the general level of government upon the individual[77] and majority voting in the decision-making process of the general level of government,[78] without becoming a federation per se. Scholars thus today see it as an intermediate form lying between a confederation and a federation, being an instance of neither political structure.[79] For this reason, the organisation is termed sui generis (incomparable, one of a kind),[80] although some argue that this designation is no longer valid.[81][82]

The organisation has traditionally used the terms "Community" and later "Union" to describe itself. The difficulties of classification involve the difference between national law (where the subjects of the law include natural persons and corporations) and international law (where the subjects include sovereign states and international organisations). They can also be seen in the light of differing European and American constitutional traditions.[81] Especially in terms of the European tradition, the term federation is equated with a sovereign federal state in international law; so the EU cannot be called a federation — at least, not without qualification. It is, however, described as being based on a federal model or federal in nature; and so it may be appropriate to consider it a federal union of states, a conceptual structure lying between the confederation of states and the federal state.[83] The German Constitutional Court refers to the EU as a Staatenverbund, an intermediate structure between the Staatenbund (confederation of states) and the Bundesstaat (federal state), consistent with this concept.[84] This may be a long-lived political form. Professor Andrew Moravcsik claims that the EU is unlikely to develop further into a federal state, but instead has reached maturity as a constitutional system.[85]

The European Council uses its leadership role to sort out disputes between member states and the institutions, and to resolve political crises and disagreements over controversial issues and policies. It acts externally as a "collective head of state" and ratifies important documents (for example, international agreements and treaties).[88]

Tasks for the President of the European Council are ensuring the external representation of the EU,[89] driving consensus and resolving divergences among member states, both during meetings of the European Council and over the periods between them.

The European Council should not be mistaken for the Council of Europe, an international organisation independent of the EU based in Strasbourg.

The European Parliament and the Council of the European Union pass legislation jointly in nearly all areas under the ordinary legislative procedure. This also applies to the EU budget. The European Commission is accountable to Parliament, requiring its approval to take office, having to report back to it and subject to motions of censure from it. The President of the European Parliament (currently Martin Schulz) carries out the role of speaker in Parliament and represents it externally. The President and Vice-Presidents are elected by MEPs every two and a half years.[94]

The EU had an agreed budget of €120.7 billion for the year 2007 and €864.3 billion for the period 2007–2013,[97] representing 1.10% and 1.05% of the EU-27's GNI forecast for the respective periods. By comparison, the United Kingdom's expenditure for 2004 was estimated to be €759 billion, and France was estimated to have spent €801 billion. In 1960, the budget of the then European Economic Community was 0.03% of GDP.[98]

In the 2010 budget of €141.5 billion, the largest single expenditure item is "cohesion & competitiveness" with around 45% of the total budget.[99] Next comes "agriculture" with approximately 31% of the total.[99] "Rural development, environment and fisheries" takes up around 11%.[99] "Administration" accounts for around 6%.[99] The "EU as a global partner" and "citizenship, freedom, security and justice" bring up the rear with approximately 6% and 1% respectively.[99]

The Court of Auditors is legally obliged to provide the Parliament and the Council with "a statement of assurance as to the reliability of the accounts and the legality and regularity of the underlying transactions".[100] The Court also gives opinions and proposals on financial legislation and anti-fraud actions.[101] The Parliament uses this to decide whether to approve the Commission's handling of the budget.

The European Court of Auditors has signed off the European Union accounts every year since 2007 and, while making it clear that the European Commission has more work to do, has highlighted that most of the errors take place at national level.[102][103] In their report on 2009 the auditors found that five areas of Union expenditure, agriculture and the cohesion fund, were materially affected by error.[104] The European Commission estimated in 2009 that the financial effect of irregularities was €1,863 million.[105]

Competences

EU member states retain all powers not explicitly handed to the European Union. In some areas the EU enjoys exclusive competence. These are areas in which member states have renounced any capacity to enact legislation. In other areas the EU and its member states share the competence to legislate. While both can legislate, member states can only legislate to the extent to which the EU has not. In other policy areas the EU can only co-ordinate, support and supplement member state action but cannot enact legislation with the aim of harmonising national laws.[106]

That a particular policy area falls into a certain category of competence is not necessarily indicative of what legislative procedure is used for enacting legislation within that policy area. Different legislative procedures are used within the same category of competence, and even with the same policy area.

The distribution of competences in various policy areas between Member States and the Union is divided in the following three categories:

Legal system

The EU is based on a series of treaties. These first established the European Community and the EU, and then made amendments to those founding treaties.[107] These are power-giving treaties which set broad policy goals and establish institutions with the necessary legal powers to implement those goals. These legal powers include the ability to enact legislation[e] which can directly affect all member states and their inhabitants.[f] The EU has legal personality, with the right to sign agreements and international treaties.[108]

Under the principle of supremacy, national courts are required to enforce the treaties that their member states have ratified, and thus the laws enacted under them, even if doing so requires them to ignore conflicting national law, and (within limits) even constitutional provisions.[g]

The Court of Justice primarily deals with cases taken by member states, the institutions, and cases referred to it by the courts of member states.[110] The General Court mainly deals with cases taken by individuals and companies directly before the EU's courts,[111] and the European Union Civil Service Tribunal adjudicates in disputes between the European Union and its civil service.[112] Decisions from the General Court can be appealed to the Court of Justice but only on a point of law.[113]

Fundamental rights

The treaties declare that the EU itself is "founded on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities ... in a society in which pluralism, non-discrimination, tolerance, justice, solidarity and equality between women and men prevail."[114]

In 2009 the Lisbon Treaty gave legal effect to the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. The charter is a codified catalogue of fundamental rights against which the EU's legal acts can be judged. It consolidates many rights which were previously recognised by the Court of Justice and derived from the "constitutional traditions common to the member states."[115] The Court of Justice has long recognised fundamental rights and has, on occasion, invalidated EU legislation based on its failure to adhere to those fundamental rights.[116]

Although signing the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) is a condition for EU membership,[h] previously, the EU itself could not accede to the Convention as it is neither a state[i] nor had the competence to accede.[j] The Lisbon Treaty and Protocol 14 to the ECHR have changed this: the former binds the EU to accede to the Convention while the latter formally permits it.

Acts

The main legal acts of the EU come in three forms: regulations, directives, and decisions. Regulations become law in all member states the moment they come into force, without the requirement for any implementing measures,[k] and automatically override conflicting domestic provisions.[e] Directives require member states to achieve a certain result while leaving them discretion as to how to achieve the result. The details of how they are to be implemented are left to member states.[l] When the time limit for implementing directives passes, they may, under certain conditions, have direct effect in national law against member states.

Decisions offer an alternative to the two above modes of legislation. They are legal acts which only apply to specified individuals, companies or a particular member state. They are most often used in competition law, or on rulings on State Aid, but are also frequently used for procedural or administrative matters within the institutions. Regulations, directives, and decisions are of equal legal value and apply without any formal hierarchy.[118]

Area of freedom, security and justice

Since the creation of the EU in 1993, it has developed its competencies in the area of freedom, security and justice, initially at an intergovernmental level and later by supranationalism. To this end, agencies have been established that co-ordinate associated actions: Europol for co-operation of police forces,[119]Eurojust for co-operation between prosecutors,[120] and Frontex for co-operation between border control authorities.[121] The EU also operates the Schengen Information System[17] which provides a common database for police and immigration authorities. This co-operation had to particularly be developed with the advent of open borders through the Schengen Agreement and the associated cross border crime.

Furthermore, the Union has legislated in areas such as extradition,[122] family law,[123] asylum law,[124] and criminal justice.[125] Prohibitions against sexual and nationality discrimination have a long standing in the treaties.[m] In more recent years, these have been supplemented by powers to legislate against discrimination based on race, religion, disability, age, and sexual orientation.[n] By virtue of these powers, the EU has enacted legislation on sexual discrimination in the work-place, age discrimination, and racial discrimination.[o]

Foreign relations

Foreign policy co-operation between member states dates from the establishment of the Community in 1957, when member states negotiated as a bloc in international trade negotiations under the Common Commercial policy.[126] Steps for a more wide-ranging co-ordination in foreign relations began in 1970 with the establishment of European Political Cooperation which created an informal consultation process between member states with the aim of forming common foreign policies. It was not, however, until 1987 when European Political Cooperation was introduced on a formal basis by the Single European Act. EPC was renamed as the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) by the Maastricht Treaty.[127]

The aims of the CFSP are to promote both the EU's own interests and those of the international community as a whole, including the furtherance of international co-operation, respect for human rights, democracy, and the rule of law.[128] The CFSP requires unanimity among the member states on the appropriate policy to follow on any particular issue. The unanimity and difficult issues treated under the CFSP sometimes lead to disagreements, such as those which occurred over the war in Iraq.[129]

Besides the emerging international policy of the European Union, the international influence of the EU is also felt through enlargement. The perceived benefits of becoming a member of the EU act as an incentive for both political and economic reform in states wishing to fulfil the EU's accession criteria, and are considered an important factor contributing to the reform of European formerly Communist countries.[133]:762 This influence on the internal affairs of other countries is generally referred to as "soft power", as opposed to military "hard power".[134]

Military

The predecessors of the European Union were not devised as a military alliance because NATO was largely seen as appropriate and sufficient for defence purposes.[135] 22 EU members are members of NATO[136] while the remaining member states follow policies of neutrality.[137] The Western European Union, a military alliance with a mutual defence clause, was disbanded in 2010 as its role had been transferred to the EU.[138]

Following the Kosovo War in 1999, the European Council agreed that "the Union must have the capacity for autonomous action, backed by credible military forces, the means to decide to use them, and the readiness to do so, in order to respond to international crises without prejudice to actions by NATO". To that end, a number of efforts were made to increase the EU's military capability, notably the Helsinki Headline Goal process. After much discussion, the most concrete result was the EU Battlegroups initiative, each of which is planned to be able to deploy quickly about 1500 personnel.[141]

Humanitarian aid is financed directly by the budget (70%) as part of the financial instruments for external action and also by the European Development Fund (30%).[148] The EU's external action financing is divided into 'geographic' instruments and 'thematic' instruments.[148] The 'geographic' instruments provide aid through the Development Cooperation Instrument (DCI, €16.9 billion, 2007–2013), which must spend 95% of its budget on overseas development assistance (ODA), and from the European Neighbourhood and Partnership Instrument (ENPI), which contains some relevant programmes.[148] The European Development Fund (EDF, €22.7 bn, 2008–2013) is made up of voluntary contributions by member states, but there is pressure to merge the EDF into the budget-financed instruments to encourage increased contributions to match the 0.7% target and allow the European Parliament greater oversight.[148]

However, five countries have reached the 0.7% target: Sweden, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Denmark and the United Kingdom.[149][150] In 2011, EU aid was 0.42% of the EU's GNI making it the world's most generous aid donor.[151]

There is a significant variance for GDP (PPP) per capita within individual EU states. The difference between the richest and poorest regions (276 NUTS-2 regions of the Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics) ranged, in 2014, from 30% of the EU28 average to 539%, or from €8,200 to €148,000 (about US$9,000 to US$162,000).[161]

Free movement of capital is intended to permit movement of investments such as property purchases and buying of shares between countries.[166] Until the drive towards economic and monetary union the development of the capital provisions had been slow. Post-Maastricht there has been a rapidly developing corpus of ECJ judgements regarding this initially neglected freedom. The free movement of capital is unique insofar as it is granted equally to non-member states.

The free movement of persons means that EU citizens can move freely between member states to live, work, study or retire in another country. This required the lowering of administrative formalities and recognition of professional qualifications of other states.[167]

The free movement of services and of establishment allows self-employed persons to move between member states to provide services on a temporary or permanent basis. While services account for 60–70% of GDP, legislation in the area is not as developed as in other areas. This lacuna has been addressed by the recently passed Directive on services in the internal market which aims to liberalise the cross border provision of services.[168] According to the Treaty the provision of services is a residual freedom that only applies if no other freedom is being exercised.

In 1999 the currency union started, first as an accounting currency with eleven member states joining. In 2002, the currency was fully put into place, when euro notes and coins were issued and national currencies began to phase out in the eurozone, which by then consisted of 12 member states. The eurozone (constituted by the EU member states which have adopted the euro) has since grown to 19 countries.[169][p]

The Eurozone (dark blue) represents 340 million people. The euro is the second-largest reserve currency in the world.

Since its launch the euro has become the second reserve currency in the world with a quarter of foreign exchanges reserves being in euro.[170] The euro, and the monetary policies of those who have adopted it in agreement with the EU, are under the control of the European Central Bank (ECB).[171]

The ECB is the central bank for the eurozone, and thus controls monetary policy in that area with an agenda to maintain price stability. It is at the centre of the European System of Central Banks, which comprehends all EU national central banks and is controlled by its General Council, consisting of the President of the ECB, who is appointed by the European Council, the Vice-President of the ECB, and the governors of the national central banks of all 28 EU member states.[172]

To prevent the joining states from getting into financial trouble or crisis after entering the monetary union, they were obliged in the Maastricht treaty to fulfil important financial obligations and procedures, especially to show budgetary discipline and a high degree of sustainable economic convergence, as well as to avoid excessive government deficits and limit the government debt to a sustainable level.

In 2006, the EU-27 had a gross inland energy consumption of 1,825 million tonnes of oil equivalent (toe).[175] Around 46% of the energy consumed was produced within the member states while 54% was imported.[175] In these statistics, nuclear energy is treated as primary energy produced in the EU, regardless of the source of the uranium, of which less than 3% is produced in the EU.[176]

The EU has had legislative power in the area of energy policy for most of its existence; this has its roots in the original European Coal and Steel Community. The introduction of a mandatory and comprehensive European energy policy was approved at the meeting of the European Council in October 2005, and the first draft policy was published in January 2007.[177]

The EU has five key points in its energy policy: increase competition in the internal market, encourage investment and boost interconnections between electricity grids; diversify energy resources with better systems to respond to a crisis; establish a new treaty framework for energy co-operation with Russia while improving relations with energy-rich states in Central Asia[178] and North Africa; use existing energy supplies more efficiently while increasing renewable energy commercialisation; and finally increase funding for new energy technologies.[177]

Rail transport in Europe is being synchronised with the European Rail Traffic Management System (ERTMS), an initiative to greatly enhance safety, increase efficiency of trains and enhance cross-border interoperability of rail transport in Europe by replacing signalling equipment with digitised mostly wireless versions and by creating a single Europe-wide standard for train control and command systems.

The developing European transport policies will increase the pressure on the environment in many regions by the increased transport network. In the pre-2004 EU members, the major problem in transport deals with congestion and pollution. After the recent enlargement, the new states that joined since 2004 added the problem of solving accessibility to the transport agenda.[183] The Polish road network was upgraded such as the A4 autostrada.[184][185]

Agriculture

The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is one of the long lasting policies of the European Community.[187] The policy has the objectives of increasing agricultural production, providing certainty in food supplies, ensuring a high quality of life for farmers, stabilising markets, and ensuring reasonable prices for consumers.[r] It was, until recently, operated by a system of subsidies and market intervention. Until the 1990s, the policy accounted for over 60% of the then European Community's annual budget, and as of 2013[update] accounts for around 34%.[188]

The policy's price controls and market interventions led to considerable overproduction. These were intervention stores of products bought up by the Community to maintain minimum price levels. To dispose of surplus stores, they were often sold on the world market at prices considerably below Community guaranteed prices, or farmers were offered subsidies (amounting to the difference between the Community and world prices) to export their products outside the Community. This system has been criticised for under-cutting farmers outside Europe, especially those in the developing world.[189] Supporters of CAP argue that the economic support which it gives to farmers provides them with a reasonable standard of living.[189]

Since the beginning of the 1990s, the CAP has been subject to a series of reforms. Initially, these reforms included the introduction of set-aside in 1988, where a proportion of farm land was deliberately withdrawn from production, milk quotas and, more recently, the 'de-coupling' (or disassociation) of the money farmers receive from the EU and the amount they produce (by the Fischler reforms in 2004). Agriculture expenditure will move away from subsidy payments linked to specific produce, toward direct payments based on farm size. This is intended to allow the market to dictate production levels.[187] One of these reforms entailed the abolition of the EU's sugar regime, which previously divided the sugar market between member states and certain African-Caribbean nations with a privileged relationship with the EU.[190]

The Competition Commissioner, currently Margrethe Vestager, is one of the most powerful positions in the Commission, notable for the ability to affect the commercial interests of trans-national corporations.[192] For example, in 2001 the Commission for the first time prevented a merger between two companies based in the United States (GE and Honeywell) which had already been approved by their national authority.[193] Another high-profile case against Microsoft, resulted in the Commission fining Microsoft over €777 million following nine years of legal action.[194]

Demographics

As of 1 January 2016, the population of the European Union is about 510.1 million people.[7] In 2013, 5,075,000 live births were registered and 4,999,200 deaths. The net migration to the EU was +653,100. In 2010, 47.3 million people who lived in the EU were born outside their resident country. This corresponds to 9.4% of the total EU population. Of these, 31.4 million (6.3%) were born outside the EU and 16.0 million (3.2%) were born in another EU member state. The largest absolute numbers of people born outside the EU were in Germany (6.4 million), France (5.1 million), the United Kingdom (4.7 million), Spain (4.1 million), Italy (3.2 million), and the Netherlands (1.4 million).[195]

The European Parliament provides translation into all languages for documents and its plenary sessions.[203] Some institutions use only a handful of languages as internal working languages.[204]Catalan, Galician, Basque, Scottish Gaelic and Welsh are not official languages of the EU but have semi-official status in that official translations of the treaties are made into them and citizens of the EU have the right to correspond with the institutions using them.

Language policy is the responsibility of member states, but EU institutions promote the learning of other languages.[t][205] English is the most widely spoken language in the EU, being spoken by 51% of the EU population when counting both native and non-native speakers.[206] German is the most widely spoken mother tongue, being spoken by 16% of the EU population. 56% of EU citizens are able to engage in a conversation in a language other than their mother tongue.[207] Most official languages of the EU belong to the Indo-Europeanlanguage family, except Estonian, Finnish, and Hungarian, which belong to the Uralic language family, and Maltese, which is a Semitic language. Most EU official languages are written in the Latin alphabet except Bulgarian, which is written in the Cyrillic alphabet, and Greek, which is written in the Greek alphabet.[208] These are the three official scripts of the European Union.[209]

The preamble to the Treaty on European Union mentions the "cultural, religious and humanist inheritance of Europe".[211] Discussion over the draft texts of the European Constitution and later the Treaty of Lisbon included proposals to mention Christianity or God, or both, in the preamble of the text, but the idea faced opposition and was dropped.[212]

Eurostat's Eurobarometer opinion polls showed in 2005 that 52% of EU citizens believed in a God, 27% in "some sort of spirit or life force", and 18% had no form of belief.[216] Many countries have experienced falling church attendance and membership in recent years.[217] The countries where the fewest people reported a religious belief were Estonia (16%) and the Czech Republic (19%).[216] The most religious countries were Malta (95%, predominantly Roman Catholic) as well as Cyprus and Romania (both predominantly Orthodox) each with about 90% of citizens professing a belief in God. Across the EU, belief was higher among women, older people, those with religious upbringing, those who left school at 15 or 16 and those "positioning themselves on the right of the political scale".[216]

Basic education is an area where the EU's role is limited to supporting national governments. In higher education, the policy was developed in the 1980s in programmes supporting exchanges and mobility. The most visible of these has been the Erasmus Programme, a university exchange programme which began in 1987. In its first 20 years, it has supported international exchange opportunities for well over 1.5 million university and college students and has become a symbol of European student life.[218]

There are now similar programmes for school pupils and teachers, for trainees in vocational education and training, and for adult learners in the Lifelong Learning Programme 2007–2013. These programmes are designed to encourage a wider knowledge of other countries and to spread good practices in the education and training fields across the EU.[219][220] Through its support of the Bologna Process, the EU is supporting comparable standards and compatible degrees across Europe.

Health care in the EU is provided through a wide range of different systems run at the national level. The systems are primarily publicly funded through taxation (universal health care). Private funding for health care may represent personal contributions towards meeting the non-taxpayer refunded portion of health care or may reflect totally private (non-subsidised) health care either paid out of pocket or met by some form of personal or employer funded insurance.[citation needed]

All EU and many other European countries offer their citizens a free European Health Insurance Card which, on a reciprocal basis, provides insurance for emergency medical treatment insurance when visiting other participating European countries.[226] A directive on cross-border healthcare aims at promoting co-operation on health care between member states and facilitating access to safe and high-quality cross-border healthcare for European patients.[227][228][229]

Sport

Sport is mainly the responsibility of the member states or other international organisations, rather than of the EU. However, there are some EU policies that have affected sport, such as the free movement of workers, which was at the core of the Bosman ruling that prohibited national football leagues from imposing quotas on foreign players with European citizenship.[234]

The Treaty of Lisbon requires any application of economic rules to take into account the specific nature of sport and its structures based on voluntary activity.[235] This followed lobbying by governing organisations such as the International Olympic Committee and FIFA, due to objections over the application of free market principles to sport, which led to an increasing gap between rich and poor clubs.[236] The EU does fund a programme for Israeli, Jordanian, Irish, and British football coaches, as part of the Football 4 Peace project.[237]

Symbols

The flag of the Union consists of a circle of 12 golden stars on a blue background. The blue represents the West, while the number and position of the stars represent completeness and unity, respectively.[238] Originally designed in 1955 for the Council of Europe, the flag was adopted by the European Communities, the predecessors of the present Union, in 1986.

Besides naming the continent, the Greek mythological figure of Europa has frequently been employed as a personification of Europe. Known from the myth in which Zeus seduces her in the guise of a white bull, Europa has also been referred to in relation to the present Union. Statues of Europa and the bull decorate several of the Union's institutions and a portrait of her is seen on the 2013 series of Euro banknotes. The bull is, for its part, depicted on all residence permit cards.[241]

The MEDIA Programme of the European Union intends to support the European popular film and audiovisual industries since 1991. It provides support for the development, promotion and distribution of European works within Europe and beyond.[251]

Arte is a public Franco-German TV network, a European channel launched in 1992 that promotes programming in the areas of culture and the arts. Created the following year, Euronews aims to cover world news from a pan-European perspective and is broatcasted in 13 languages, including 8 official in the EU.

^It is effectively treated as one of the Copenhagen criteria, Assembly.coe.int. It should be noted that this is a political and not a legal requirement for membership. Archived 26 June 2008 at the Wayback Machine.

^Opinion (2/92) of the European Court of Justice on "Accession by the Community to the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms" 1996 E.C.R. I-1759 (in French), ruled that the European Community did not have the competence to accede to the ECHR.

^To do otherwise would require the drafting of legislation which would have to cope with the frequently divergent legal systems and administrative systems of all of the now 28 member states. See Craig and de Búrca, p. 115

References

^ ab"United in diversity". Europa (web portal). European Commission. Retrieved 20 January 2010. 'United in diversity' is the motto of the European Union. The motto means that, via the EU, Europeans are united in working together for peace and prosperity, and that the many different cultures, traditions and languages in Europe are a positive asset for the continent.

^For example, David Marquand says it is ‘less than a federation but more than a confederation’; Brigid Laffan and Kimmo Kiljunen both see it residing ‘between a confederation and a federation’; Thomas Hueglin and Alan Fenna locate it ‘somewhere between federation and confederation’; and Kalypso Nicolaidis argues ‘it is more than a confederation of sovereign states; ... (however, it) should not become a federal state’.
Michael Burgess enlarges: the EU 'is not a federation but it is also more than a confederation understood in the classical sense. It exists, then, in a kind of conceptual limbo, a twilight zone ... which has no name'.
Paul Magnette illuminates the nature of the perceived 'in-betweenness': 'Since the seventeenth century, legal theorists have repeated that only two forms of union between states are possible: either the confederation, born of an international treaty concluded between sovereign states, where all decisions are unanimously adopted by state representatives; or the federal state, established by a constitution, where the law voted on by a bicameral parliament applies directly to the citizens. Tertium non datur. There is no third way ... In these, classic, political terms, the European Union is, strictly speaking, inconceivable'.
Burgess, Michael (2000) Federalism and European Union: The Building of Europe 1950–2000, Routledge, London, pp. 41–2. Hueglin, Thomas and Fenna, Alan (2006) Comparative Federalism: A Systematic Inquiry, Broadview, Peterborough, p. 13. Kiljunen, Kimmo (2004) The European Constitution in the Making, Centre for European Policy Studies, Brussels, p. 22. Laffan, Brigid (2002) The Future of Europe Debate, Institute of European Affairs, Dublin, p. 10. Magnette, Paul (2005) What Is the European Union? Nature and Prospects, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, pp. 4–5, 190. Marquand, David (2006) ‘Federalism and the British: Anatomy of a Neurosis’, in Political Quarterly, Vol. 77, No. 2, p. 175. Nicolaidis, Kalypso (2004) ‘We, the Peoples of Europe ...’, in Foreign Affairs, Vol. 83, No. 6, pp. 101–2.

^Jacques Delors, the President of the European Commission upon entry into force of the Single European Act, which introduced the widespread use of majority voting to complete the single market, saw it as having at that stage become an ‘Unidentified Political Object’. Speech at the People's University, Lille, 8 March 1987.

^"Is Europe still sui generis? Signals from The White Paper on European Governance". Retrieved 12 February 2016. ... we see the notions of governance deployed in the White Paper as undermining the description of the EU as sui generis. It is becoming like a national state, but we differ from many of the critics (or enthusiasts) of the White Paper in one major way. Rather than seeing the EU becoming a state-like object, taking on the trappings of a 19th—or more correctly 20th—century state, we see national states moving towards the EU, adopting many of the governing practices advocated by the White Paper.

^Moravcsik, Andrew; Moravcsik, Andrew (2009) [2004]. "Liberal Intergovernmentalism". In Wiener, Antje; Diez, Thomas. European Integration Theory (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN978-0-19-922609-2. Every constitutional system reaches a point where it is mature, where it no longer needs to move forward to remain stable. The EU has reached that point. The EU is not a state in the making: it is the most ambitious and successful of international organisations.

^"Britain and France to work together" by Catherine Field. 4 November 2010. nzherald.co.nz. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), Britain spent more than US$69 billion on defence last year, placing it third in the world after the United States and China, while France spent US$67.31 billion, the fourth largest. Together, Britain and France account for 45 per cent of Europe's defence budget, 50 per cent of its military capacity and 70 per cent of all spending in military research and development. Copyright 2010, APN Holdings NZ Limited.

^ ab"Energy consumption and production: EU27 energy dependence rate at 54% in 2006: Energy consumption stable"(PDF) (Press release). Eurostat. 10 July 2008. Retrieved 12 September 2008.
In the EU27, gross inland energy consumption was 1 825 million tonnes of oil equivalent (toe) in 2006, stable compared with 2005, while energy production decreased by 2.3% to 871 mn toe ...
Gross inland consumption is defined as primary production plus imports, recovered products and stock change, less exports and fuel supply to maritime bunkers (for seagoing ships of all flags) ...
A tonne of oil equivalent (toe) is a standardised unit defined on the basis of one tonne of oil having a net calorific value of 41.868 Gigajoules.

^ ab"EU supply and demand for nuclear fuels". Euratom Supply Agency—Annual Report 2007(PDF). Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities. 2008. p. 22. ISBN978-92-79-09437-8. Retrieved 1 March 2009. European uranium mining supplied just below 3% of the total EU needs, coming from the Czech Republic and Romania (a total of 526 tU).
Nuclear energy and renewable energy are treated differently from oil, gas , and coal in this respect.

^"Agriculture: Meeting the needs of farmers and consumers". Europa: Gateway to the European Union. European Commission. 26 August 2011. Retrieved 4 November 2011. ... the common agricultural policy is the most integrated of all EU policies and consequently takes a large share of the EU budget. Nevertheless, its portion of the EU budget has dropped from a peak of nearly 70% in the 1970s to 34% over the 2007–2013 period.

^ ab"Discrimination in the EU in 2012"(PDF), Special Eurobarometer, 393, European Union: European Commission, p. 233, 2012, retrieved 14 August 2013 The question asked was "Do you consider yourself to be...?" With a card showing: Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, Other Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, Buddhist, Hindu, Atheist, and Non-believer/Agnostic. Space was given for Other (SPONTANEOUS) and DK. Jewish, Sikh, Buddhist, Hindu did not reach the 1% threshold.

^Jewish population figures may be unreliable. Sergio DellaPergola. "World Jewish Population (2002)". American Jewish Year Book. The Jewish Agency for Israel. Archived from the original on 22 December 2004. Retrieved 3 May 2007.

^Riché, Preface xviii, Pierre Riché reflects: "[H]e enjoyed an exceptional destiny, and by the length of his reign, by his conquests, legislation and legendary stature, he also profoundly marked the history of Western Europe."